Evelyn Waugh presented his biography of St. Edmund Campion, the Elizabethan poet, scholar and gentleman who became the haunted, trapped and murdered priest as “a simple, perfectly true story of heroism and holiness.”

But it is written with a novelist's eye for the telling incident and with all the elegance and feeling of a master of English prose. From the years of success as an Oxford scholar, to entry into the newly founded Society of Jesus and a professorship in Prague, Campion's life was an inexorable progress towards the doomed mission to England. There followed pursuit, betrayal, a spirited defense of loyalty to the Queen, and a horrifying martyr’s death at Tyburn.

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St. Edmund Campion

Feast Day:
Roman Rite Calendar - 12/01

Also known as
The Pope's Champion

Memorial
1 December
25 October as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales

Profile
Son of a Catholic bookseller named Edmund whose family converted to Anglicanism. The boy planned to enter his father's trade, but earned a scholarship to Saint John’s College, Oxford under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I's court favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Sought after speaker. Queen Elizabeth offered him a deaconate in the Church of England. He declined the offer, fled to the continent, and joined the Jesuits. Ordained in 1578.

He spent some time working in Bohemia, then returned to London as part of a Jesuit mission, crossing the Channel disguised as a jewel merchant, and worked with Jesuit brother Saint Nicholas Owen. There he wrote a description of his new mission in which he explained his work was religious, not political; it became known as Campion’s Brag. Widely distributed, it encouraged many Catholics to remain loyal to their faith. It also led to Edmund's arrest, imprisonment and torture in the Tower of London, and martyrdom.

Born
24 January 1540 at London, England

Died
hanged, drawn, and quartered on 1 December 1581 at Tyburn, England; parts of his body were displayed at each of the four city gates as a warning to other Catholics; relics at Rome, Prague, London, Oxford, Stonyhurst, and Roehampton

Beatified
9 December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII

Canonized
May 1970 by Pope Paul VI; one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales